ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by outlining some of the ways in which the routines of commuting are important to people. It then proceeds by interrogating the issue of structure and the manner in which people creatively and ritualistically use routines at times to provide order to their lives, while at other times they find themselves longing to break out of existing patterns of behaviour. The chapter argues that routines do not just unfold in a simple predetermined and mechanical fashion; they have tempos and rhythms of their own that make them susceptible to change, but that even help people adapt to the ever-changing context of everyday life. As a means of exemplifying this, it closes by examining the particularities of the commute as a public endeavour in which people continuously use routines as vehicles of boundary control – ever moving back and forth between states of public and private; work and leisure; and home and away.
